This and that for your Thursday reading. – George Monbiot comments on the far more important values we’re endangering in the name of constant financial and material growth: To try to stabilise this system, governments behave like soldiers billeted in an ancient manor, burning the furniture, the paintings and the stairs to keep themselves warm ...

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – In a theme all too familiar based on Brad Wall’s use of millions of public dollars to pay for access to U.S. lawmakers, Simon Enoch discusses the connections between Wall and ALEC: Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough is both a member and State corporate co-chair the American Legislative Exchange ...

Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Dan Lett discusses Stephen Harper’s callous disregard for missing and murdered aboriginal women – and how it should serve as a call to Canadians generally to take a broader look at the causes of social inequality: Why so much resistance to a broader, sociological analysis? A national inquiry ...

Assorted content to start your week. – Robert Jay Lifton discusses the “stranded ethics” of a fossil fuel industry which is willing to severely damage our planet in order to protect market share: Can we continue to value, and thereby make use of, the very materials most deeply implicated in what could be the demise ...

Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Leo Panitch questions the “responsible capitalism” theme which is being used by Ed Miliband in lieu of a more significant alternative to unfettered market dogma: It is most unlikely that Miliband’s call for “responsible capitalism” will refresh genuine political debate let alone galvanise anew a meaningful left-right discourse ...

This and that for your Thursday reading. – Michael Hiltzik points out new research showing that business-focused policies do nothing at all to encourage any positive economic outcomes: in fact, a higher rating from ALEC for low-tax, low-regulation government correlates to less economic growth. But Kevin Drum highlights what the corporate agenda is really intended ...

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – The Economist takes a look at the effect of a “lean in” philosophy toward work – and finds that we’d get better results encouraging creative development rather than needless busy work: All this “leaning in” is producing an epidemic of overwork, particularly in the United States. Americans now ...

Every extractive capitalist economy needs a mechanism that allows corporate heavyweights to snuggle up with elected officials. In the US, there’s American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and if you haven’t yet been horrified by Bill Moyers’ piece on how ALEC essentially enables corporations to write state laws, you’re in for a treat. Where I live, ...

Duke-Energy.gif A coalition of environmental, civil rights and democracy reform groups today called upon Duke Energy to join the 38 other companies that have left the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. In their letter sent to Duke CEO Jim Rogers this morning, the coalition requests that Duke Energy "disassociate and stop funding ALEC immediately." "We ...

That’s likely the message Harper FinMin and garden gnome Jim Flaherty will get when he gets together with his future employers top Canadian CEOs for his annual summer “policy retreat.” Flaherty, it seems, wines and dines the Big Boys and they return his generosity in the form of legislative wish lists. Here’s what they dished ...

Romney and Bush.jpg In the last few months, the press has been drawing a lot of parallels between presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and former Republican President George W. Bush. And they have plenty of reasons for doing so. Romney has already tapped many of the same Bush economic and foreign policy advisers, and ...

shutterstock_2531395.jpg When business-friendly bills and resolutions spread like wildfire in statehouses nationwide calling for something as far-fetched as a halt to EPA regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, ALEC is always a safe bet for a good place to look for their origin. In the midst of hosting its 39th Annual Meeting this week in Salt Lake City, Utah, the American Legislative ...

alec-exposed-600×400.jpeg On July 26, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled PA Act 13 unconstitutional. The bill would have stripped away local zoning laws, eliminated the legal concept of a Home Rule Charter, limited private property rights, and in the process, completely disempowered town, city, municipal and county governments, particularly when it comes to shale gas development. The Court ruled that ...

Exxon-Mobil-XTO-Energy-e1338448150794.jpeg This is a guest post by Connor Gibson, cross-posted from Greenpeace. Wake up and smell the frack fluid! But don't ask what's in it, at least not in Ohio, cause it's still not your right to know. Ohio is in the final stages of making an Exxon trojan horse on hydrofracking into state law, ...

shutterstock_15465343.jpg When does a study on the unconventional shale gas industry become a "shill gas study"? The quick answer: when nearly everyone writing and peer reviewing it has close ties to the industry they're purportedly doing an "objective" study on. The newest kid on the block: a recent study published by SUNY Buffalo's Shale Resources and ...

shutterstock_90778001.jpg Ever wonder why a blooming green energy industry has faced such harsh opposition? Now, as the old adage goes, "the cat's out of the bag." The Guardian today revealed the network of fossil-funded groups coordinating the ongoing onslaught of attacks on renewable energy, particularly wind power. A memorandum passed to The Guardian from the Checks and Balances Project details the ...

shutterstock_95581429.jpg 19th Century German statesman Otto von Bismarck once said, "If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made." The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), put on the map by the Center for Media and Democracy in its "ALEC Exposed" project, is the archetype of von Bismarck's truism. So too are the fracking chemical disclosure bills that have passed ...

ALEC Exposed Image.jpg The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), as covered previously by DeSmogBlog, is the "Trojan Horse" behind mandating that climate change denial ("skepticism," or "balance," in its words) be taught in K-12 classrooms. Well, ALEC is at it again, it appears. Facing an IRS complaint filed by Common Cause, one of the leading advocacy groups working to ...